Yesterday was Anzac Day here in Australia – such an important day to mark respect to all our arm services both past and present.

My pop went to war as did two of my uncles – thankfully they all made it home from war but now that pop has since passed it has turned to my generation to continue to keep his memory alive. My lovely cousin Brad is a police officer and every year he marches proudly wearing pop’s medals and keeping his spirit alive – thanks Brad for reminding us of the sacrifice that pop made for our family – long may you continue to march in his honour.

Love these very cute marshmallows.

The ones were used at wedding as a novel way to find which table number you are seated at but I am thinking that they will be great at a birthday celebration with the age of the birthday person on it.

Now I have just got to work out how to get the number on each marshmallow – at least the next birthday party I am planning for only requires the number 1!!

Ok it is the week for questions to you all in blogland! Things in Australia have turned a little crazy in TV land this week – I am not big on TV during the evening usually as it my time to hop on the computer uninterrupted and scour the world of blogs. This week however things have turned nasty with the return of Masterchef Australia to our screens – every night this week it is sucking me in – and to add to all that tonight is the finale of So You Think You Can Dance Australia!

So now I sit here with laptop on lap watching SYTYCD trying to work out how to blog and keep up with everyone. I have had the most wonderful and lovely comments on my blog in the past few weeks so I am visiting loads of new blogs that I hadn’t visited before – this has become a full time job!

So my question – how does everyone else keep up with all this wonderfulness which is the blogworld – do you click through a few each day or do you also sit on your computer for hours? Do you find new blogs to follow each week and if you become a follower how do you keep up with everyone? Do you leave loads of comments every day or just the odd one every now and then? And then there is time spent on your own blog! Oh the questions could go on forever but I would love to hear any thoughts on time management in the blogworld.

Ahh to have a dream wardrobe like these celebs …

This is my all time favourite – Oprah’s wardrobe designed by Nate

And to have the space for all these shoes

So elegant

Paula seems to like her accessories

We are having the most amazing autumn weather here in Sydney – in preparation for what is normally a change to colder weather I did the wardrobe flip just last week and put lots of my summer stuff away and started sorting through the winter wardrobe – of course this is the perfect excuse for the weather to confuse us! Not that I am complaining as there is nothing better than sunshine and warm days but it got me to thinking about how nice it would be to have a lovely big wardrobe without having to put things away each season!

Oh to dream … which one do you like best?

It is amazing how things can change in the space of a week or even a day!

Yesterday started a little flat with a little anonymous comment that was well just not necessary! I headed to the place I know best to find a lovely quote to cheer me up – Simone’s place “The Bottom of the Ironing Basket”. I said hi and mentioned to her that I was going to borrow one of her quotes – Thought Thursday began. Well little did I know that the wonderful Simone would not only come back and say hi but create an entire post about my home and send her beautiful readers over to say hi and leave me some lovely comments – bing Fairy Blogmother Simone turn Thoughtful Thursday into Thankful Thursday. I am truly amazed by the wonderful people in blogland so today a little post about some other special people who have helped me to see the dream of building our special house.

The first special person is Mr A – my hubby (that was a little journey in itself but I will leave that for another day). The wonderful Mr A had the insight some 14 years ago to spot this little red brick run down home in a cul-de-sac on the edge of a golf course with a for sale sign out the front! Lucky for us his great judgement all those years ago gave us this amazing location – the house was rented out for 12 years while we went about our business in another house – his father would say to me that he had purchased the best block of land in Sydney to which I would smile and roll my eyes – to me it was a nice spot but was it really that great?

The second special person in my life is my dad – my dad was a very inspiring man. A quite and humble man who had an alcoholic dad, that divorced his mum when he was just 7 years of age. Dad became the man of the house and by the age of 14 had left school and was out in the work force. My dad however had an incredible determination to be successful. By 18 he owned his first business. By 22 he had married my mum and a year later I arrived. My dad also had wonderful insight and guts. Over the years he would put his heart and sole into various business all of which were incredibly successful – he would see something different and give it a go because he thought if you didn’t try it you would never know – he had his ups and downs and even a heart attack at 33 because of stress but he never gave up but went on to bigger and better things.

My dad had a love for nice houses and went about building the first of many homes when I was 8. He got into the property developing business. He gathered as much knowledge he could from other builders and would do some parts himself and finally when he was 55 he decided to get his builders licence (a not so easy undertaking for an uneducated man in his 50’s) so he could do it all himself . It was at this time that I started working beside my dad – I did everything from his ordering, to bookkeeping, to driving the truck to the tip to picking up supplies to picking the kitchens and paint colours. We were a great team and he taught me that if you don’t know the answer you find it. Thankfully he taught me about never giving up as it was just 3 short years after starting work with my dad that our family suffered the worst year of our life – in March 2003 I lost my much wanted and loved first born daughter Laura after a difficult pregnancy followed 7 short weeks later by the loss of my beautiful dad to bowel cancer at age 58.

I did consider falling in a heap but my dad had other plans – he had set it up so that there was no time for me consider such things – we were in the middle of building 4 brand new homes and I had to finish them. So it was with my dad’s spirit that I set to work completing these homes. My dad also was one of the kindest people I ever knew. He would go out of his way to help others and never expect things in return. Well dad I am pleased to say that the kindness you showed others came back three fold while I was building those houses – my dads friends and colleagues were there whenever I needed it. I could ring one of dad’s builder mates and ask advice about exactly where a pipe should go in the ground and they would be there to help!

So here we are now in 2010, after numerous years of planning, the spirit of my dad, the memory of beautiful Laura, the insight of my husband and the determination to realise a dream that I am now proud to have the lovely home I live in today.

While to some the kitchen may look to be the most boring they have ever seen to me it is very much a place of joy filled with the laughter of my 3 georgous girls and husband and the numerous family and friends that have shared a meal around in it in the 5 months we have been living here. I am pleased to say we are just a normal family who leads a simple life in the suburbs but is fortunate enough to have a lovely home to live our simple life in (I have discovered that simplicity is the key to happiness!)